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I am a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the dynamics of health, politics, and social inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. Building on conceptual approaches from medical anthropology, political economy, and African studies, I take a people-centered approach to understanding the social dynamics surrounding austerity, infectious disease epidemics, public health systems, and imperialism.

I am currently accepting new graduate students. Students interested in working on projects that overlap with my research areas should email me at: theodore-powers@uiowa.edu to discuss the possibility of joining our graduate program. 

Books:

• Powers, Theodore. 2020. Sustaining Life: AIDS Activism in South Africa. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Recent Publications:

• Powers, Theodore and Jimmy Pieterse. 2024. Vacillating Vaccines: Responses to COVID-19 in the United States and South Africa. Anthropology Southern Africa 47(1): 6-19.
• Powers, Theodore. 2023. Black Urban Communities and the Politics of Survival in South Africa. Africa at LSE. London: Firoz Lalji Institute, London School of Economics. 
• Powers, Theodore. 2022. On Power and Policy in Post-Colonial Africa: An Introduction. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 40(3): 317-332.
• Powers, Theodore. 2022. People, Policy, History: Citizenship and Black Urban Communities in South Africa. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 40(3): 354-369.
• Powers, Theodore. 2022. Austerity. In A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, Third Edition. Edited by James Carrier, pp.461-472. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• Powers, Theodore. 2022. Uncertain Horizons: COVID-19, Debt, and the Future of Public Health in Africa. Africa: Year in Review 2021. Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. 
• Hong, Insu, Bradley Wilson, Thomson Gross, Jamison Conley, and Theodore Powers. 2022. Challenging terrains: socio-spatial analysis of Primary Health Care Access Disparities in West Virginia. Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy: 1-21.
• Powers, Theodore and Jeremy Rayner. 2021. Pathogenic Politics: Authoritarianism, Inequality, and Capitalism in the COVID-19 Crisis. Open Anthropological Research 1(1): 159-166
• Powers, Theodore. 2021. Authoritarian violence, public health, and the necropolitical state: Engaging the South African response to COVID-19. Open Anthropological Research 1(1): 60-72.
• Powers, Theodore. 2021. People are the State. Africa is a Country. 
  
  Courses Taught:
• ANTH:2100 - Anthropology and Contemporary World Problems
• ANTH:2136 – Race, Place, and Power: Urban Anthropology
• ANTH:2155 – Fighting to Live: Anthropology and Health Movements
• ANTH/GHS:2182 - Africa: Health and Society
• ANTH:3123 - Making a Living: Perspectives on Economic Anthropology
• ANTH:3199 – Anthropology and Global Health Policy
• ANTH:5101 – Sociocultural Seminar – Empire, Anthropology, Decolonization